Sequester solutions

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

The sequester issue seems to have dropped from the national front page in recent weeks, crowded out by all the scandals cropping up in the Obama administration, no doubt.

Perhaps it would be a refreshing break to come back to it as a bit of respite from all the other messes.

When one sees suggestions for balancing the budget, they are usually grand visions, encompassing whole departments. There is another way to go at this, eating the elephant one bite at a time, so to speak.

Take offices and air conditioning. The government is currently targeting around 150 square feet per person for office space (down from 200 square feet 10 years ago – good for them).

This includes lobbies, bathrooms, and so forth. There are roughly 2.5 million civilians on the payroll of the federal government. Let’s cut out their air conditioning.

Here in Atlanta, my wife and I spend about $2,000 per year on AC – or $1,000 each. Doing the math, that’s about $2.5 billion a year the government spends on air conditioning. It’s a start.

Government vehicles. When I was very poor, I didn’t buy a vehicle with air conditioning, or if it had it and it broke, it stayed broke. Nineteen years ago, I came to Atlanta and had an old Mercedes 300SD on which the air conditioning died. It was rugged, but you can survive.

The GAO says the total federal fleet is 450,000 vehicles. What does air conditioning cost these days? $1,500 per vehicle? How about radios? $500? So there is $2,000 per vehicle if we eliminate these. There’s another $900 million saved buying vehicles without radios and air conditioning.

Parties, excursions and so forth. The IRS just confessed to spending $50 million in a year for conferences. Probably a half a billion here if we cut out this nonsense across the board.

Make all the government employees that travel stay in one of the “R” hotel chains Ramada, Radisson or Red Roof – and make them double bunk, just like the Walmart top brass do, and that should be good for at least another half billion.

Finally, require all government employees, including elected officials, to travel by Amtrak – the nationally owned transportation system – which should make federal government travel nearly free since they will be filling otherwise empty seats, anyway.

Also, this gives them a chance to mingle with the proletariat and hear how it is going out in the boondocks.

Alternatively, they could use Megabus (www.megabus.com) which isn’t free, but is very, very cheap and has free wi-fi.

Bottom line, chip away a little here, a little there, like the rest of us do when times are tight, and we should be able to squeeze $250 billion out of the budget without affecting services.

That would be real money.

And it would go a long way toward repairing the taxpayers’ opinions of a government gone wild.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., following decades of wandering the world, and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.